2011/08/08 – Free Market Theology: Response to ‘Tadpole256’

"Listen to me, you left-wingers!"

This is a blog response to “tadpole256” who left the following comment on the DesteniProductions video, “A Good Capitalist is a Dead Capitalist” on August 5, 2011.

@DarrylWThomas There is a FreeMarket in Hong Kong… The U.S. had a very free market until the industrial revolution, which ostensibly was a direct result of the Free Market. Read some history books, don’t listen to the brain-dead lefty propaganda.

Well, since “free market” is an idea based on liberalism, I am wondering what kind of history books tapole256 reads. Ones that no doubt reflect his opinions he already has, of course. But without going any further, what is it “tadpole256” means when he mentions, “free markets?”

Free Markets is a quaint term that describes an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses and free from government regulation. Government should never, ever be involved in commerce.

To this point I must refer “tadpole356” to recent history all the way back to 2008 when In the US government used at least $700 billion of taxpayers’ money to buy up toxic assets. That was an intervention that your typical neoliberal had no problem with, strangely enough. Now why didn’t the invisible hand of the marketplace swoop in and rescue these poor neoliberal hacks from their pathological greed? Why didn’t the neoliberal investor take responsibility for what happened and accept the consequences? Because what these neoliberals say about the myth of free market capitalism is nothing more than a political perspective pretending to be an objective economic one. When it comes to the economic reality of their bank accounts, the neoliberal will take any “intervention” the government can muster.

Tadpole256 also erroneously claims that their were “very free markets” in America BEFORE the Industrial Revolution, but this doesn’t match what professional historians of the subject say. Capitalism has to have three ingredients in order be properly called “capitalism.” Land, money and labor. There was no effective labor force other than importing human beings from Africa as slaves that existed before the Industrial Revolution, and hence, no “free market.” The slave-trade was the culmination of Mercantilism[1] before it mutated into Capitalism (by way of the Industrial Revolution – and it was this principle Crime Against Humanity that the fortune of America was built).

Another reason free market capitalism is a myth is because the richest countries became rich through – wait for it – economic political policies. You know – “protectionism.” America and the United Kingdom were the biggest protectionist countries in the world during their rising economic trajectories. It is a sick joke that the IMF and World Bank frown on poorer countries trying to use the same methods to gain wealth. People like “Tadploe256” shouldn’t be listened to because they confuse their beloved political ideology with reality.

So why does this myth of free market capitalism prevail and why do so many neoliberals still believe in such fairy tales? Because free market mythology is standard brainwashing fare you get in Econ 101 at every college in the world and that makes people who are hot for capitalism’s dreams all warm and fuzzy inside. But they are blind and will eventually have to pay the piper for their unconscionably greedy ways.

[1] Mercantilism is the economic theory that trade generates wealth and is stimulated by the accumulation of profitable balances, which a government should encourage by means of protectionism. American economic reality has always been mercantilist in principle, and it was protectionism that enabled certain countries, like America and the UK, to become the richest in the world. Conversely, we can see what “deregulation” as done: it has accomplished creating burst bubbles, bailouts and trillions of dollars of debt that America will never be able to pay back. America has already lost its AAA credit standing due to the cynical greed of the investor, and things will only get worse. It gives me a warm feeling when I hear things like the richest man in the world recently lost 6 billion dollars in the wake of last week’s US budget debacle. Neoliberals everywhere are in for a great big surprise.